Silver dollars at the Philadelphia Mint - 1954

RWB

Following is an image of the vault inventory of silver dollars stored at the Philadelphia Mint as of April 30, 1954. Uncurrent dollars (Morgan type) are identified as "Bland." Pittman dollars are identified by date, and circulated coins are simply called "circulated storage."

Notice that about 35 million uncirculated Morgans, 30 million 1921 Morgans, and 28 million 1922 Peace type are included.

CaptHenway

How Bland.........

richardshipp

was this part of the wikileaks release?

RWB

Nope --- this is part of Wikiclogs...now, where'd I put the drain opener....?

LanLord

How would they have designated high relief peace dollars

RWB

The plain date "1921" indicates 1921 Peace dollars in some other documents, so presumably the 69k pieces are Peace dollars. Other places have them called "1921 Peace." 1921 Pittman is reserved for Morgans

Mark

RWB:

I presume these are the coins that were handed out in the years prior to 1963 when the run on them caused the minto stop handing out silver dollars? So some of the coins listed here were the 1903-O's that were distributed circa 1962 or so and drastically lowered the price of the then-most rare dollar, the 1903-O?

It's a shame they didn't inventory all the pre-struck 1964 Peace dollars.... !

RWB

Most of the dollars were at Philadelphia and the NY Reserve Bank. There were some at Denver, too. There's no way at present to tell where the 1903-O dollars were stored, likewise for the CC dollars.

oreville

What does S.S. dollars mean?

NitroCruiser

I wonder if there might just be a bag or two laying at the bottom of the stack at one the mints or Federal Reserves somewhere, today. Perhaps an inventory mix up. One can dream.

RWB

What does S.S. dollars mean?

"Standard Silver" dollar = meeting the legal description of currency. The other standard being the gold dollar.

firstmint

Philadelphia coin dealer Harry Forman had an "IN" with someone at the Philadelphia Mint (or FRB) in 1962 and was the primary person responsible for getting the scarce "O" mint dollars out into circulation.

It was claimed that he would have his contact take a lit cigarette and burn off a small part of the bottom of the bag to check for dates and mintmarks.

Amazingly, Forman broke both of his legs jumping off a loading dock with a bag of silver dollars in each hand.

The fact that the silver dollars were availble at face value to the public was brought about by the summer 1962 World's Fair in Seattle where they had a million silver dollars on display. I was a 9 year old who attended the fair and saw the display, amongst riding the monorail and going to the top of the Space Needle, etc.

ricko

Amazing what a diligent search of documents can reveal. Thanks, Cheers, RickO